


between the idea and the reality

by thermodynamicActivity (chlorinetrifluoride)



Series: The Collegestuck 'Verse [12]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Gen, Humanstuck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 03:37:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9416762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlorinetrifluoride/pseuds/thermodynamicActivity
Summary: In 2007, you call Krishna one of your closest friends. You two spend an inordinate amount of time together in the History Department, planning lessons and talking shit. In 2000, you aren't nearly as sure of things. You aren't nearly as sure of yourself. Your name is Marisol, this is your second year of college, and you aren't particularly sure of anything, other than the fact that you spend far more time ruminating than you do sleeping, or even studying.





	

_**April 2000 - Marisol Perez** _

Your name is Marisol, Mari to friends, Reyna to your brothers, and this is your second year of college. Some of the other History majors have nicknamed you Redglare for your telltale glasses, and for the fact that you also have the greatest case of resting bitch face the world has ever seen.

The last bit was something Simon said. He has a point.

You actually like the nickname, all things considered. You might keep it.

It’s a clear, bright Sunday when you get out on your skateboard, bound for the library. You have a paper for Contemporary Civilizations due in five days, and you want to have it finished - typed up and everything - ideally, by the end of the evening. That way, you can worry about other things. 

Your father left a message on the machine in your room, asking you to call him when you get the time. Maybe you’ll do that, once you’re done, assuming of course that you don’t end up working late into the night. Once you get into the library, and onto the right floor, you make a beeline for your usual spot, a table by one of the windows.

Krishna works not far away from you. He even smiles and nods at you in greeting, before going back to his own respective task. You wonder whether he’s working on a speech, or working on an assignment. Certainly he attacks both with identical passion.

He’s one of the most intense people you’ve ever met. Cat’s one of the most intense people you’ve ever met. Even Simon, for all his surface world-weariness, bears a strange intensity toward life, at least toward its emotional aspects. You’re drawn to the three of them, the way you have been drawn to few others.

You gaze at Krishna again. He has a book open in front of him, eyes flitting careful across the pages. He pauses to annotate something, and goes back to reading, scratching at his goatee. There’s a certain furtive, intrusive quality to watching someone who doesn’t know you’re watching.

You kick yourself for it. You should be working on your paper, not contemplating the minutiae of Krishna’s movements. You feel a little unbalanced, the same way you do around Simon or Cat.

But with them, it’s because they have a history and a story between them that neither you nor Krishna were part of. It’s also due to an acute awareness of how much older they are than you. Cat three years, and Simon four. It won’t be such a large gulf later on, when you’re also in your twenties. For now, though, it feels significant. You feel like a child, even if, out of the four of you, Simon is probably the most outwardly immature. He has not an ounce of self-restraint.

Meanwhile, Krishna’s only twenty, and generally approachable. 

You gather your books and your courage, and walk over to Krishna’s table, to sit across from him. That should keep you from staring at him, the fact that he’ll be close enough to catch you in the act.

“Do you mind if I sit here?” you ask. “Would I be interrupting you?”

Krishna shakes his head and smiles once more.

“Not at all. It’s always nicer to work among friends,” he replies.

Friends.

You smile back, if not for the same reason as he. You two are friends, even if your mind says otherwise sometimes.

The problem is, you keep entertaining this belief that secretly, not a one of those three can stand you. They wouldn’t be remiss in it, you think. You have your dry sarcasm, your analytical approach toward most things, and your quest for justice, but take that away, and who/what are you really, little Marisol?

Not much. A half-blind girl on a skateboard.

You take out your books, and try to work on your paper. You sneak a glance at what Krishna’s writing, and conclude that it’s probably something he plans to recite at a demonstration. There aren’t enough footnotes for it to be a paper.

Instead of doing anything vaguely useful, you fall into a spell of reflection.

When you were a bit younger, and the connections you perceived between people were more facile, you thought that Simon was the link holding them together. He was Krishna’s roommate, and Cat’s best friend. Then you got acquainted with Ms. Martineau (unlike Simon, you would never call her Dolo), and started spending time at her place, and you figured that the link had been Krishna all along.

Later, you realized that they took turns being that for each other. Krishna had the idealism. Simon had the cynicism. Cat forced them to compromise. You were/are an outsider. Not an intruder, quite. They invited you into their group. But they are a triad, and you are the fourth, with no particular role to play.

A lot of the time, it seems like they don’t know what to do with you.

Simon listens to you when you’ve turned inward, but he tends to stew in his own depressive recollections, even when you’re not around. Certainly the man has a lot to be depressed about, and a lot of recollections. You do not begrudge him this.

Cat is kind, and patient, but she also has a penchant for turning inward, if only because of her artistic inclinations. She cannot always bring you out of yourself.

Krishna is something else entirely. He thrives off interaction. For all his speeches, he prefers having conversations to lecturing. He drags you out of yourself, or at least your problems out into the open, where they can be discussed.

(He should have become a social worker, like his mother. You decide that teaching isn't that far off.)

He always finds time to talk to you, even as he plots the anarchist revolution, or whatever his end-game actually is. You don’t know how much of that is pity and concern, and you sort of wish you’d never told him you’d been sexually assaulted, because then you wouldn’t have to worry.

That isn’t the only thing you’ve spoken with him about.

You told him that you’ve felt like an outsider since you were young. Initially, it was because you were blind, and there was an entire world you thought you were missing. After several surgeries, you became (more) sighted, and then there was a whole new world of sensory input to consider and process. It made you uncomfortable when you were eleven. It makes you uncomfortable now, physically, as well as mentally.

You always have to strain a little to see properly. And you see the entire world through red glasses, to protect your eyes.

You know intellectually that the sight you were given is something temporary. You’ll develop glaucoma eventually, and then you'll gradually lose your vision.

That was the part you couldn’t tell Cat, who could empathize with the rest as someone who grew up hard of hearing.

One day you will be like the child you were, who could tell the difference between light and darkness, and not much else. That’s why you kept your cane, even when you no longer needed it. That’s why you still have books printed in Braille under your bed. You cannot afford to grow complacent with an arrangement that will fade.

(You thought of a book you once read in school - _Flowers for Algernon_. You recalled Charlie's regression, all the fear and uncertainty he experienced, but forbade yourself from feeling any self-pity. No one is promised anything in this life.)

You told Krishna this, and he nodded, saying that it made logical sense.

“It’s good to be prepared for what will come,” he said, “but it shouldn’t stop you from living your life here and now. And it's okay to be afraid.”

You blinked at him and agreed.

“You’re right. Definitely.”

He’s usually right about most things. Not all. But a lot of them.

“Don’t agree with me because I’ve said it. Agree because you believe it. You don’t even have to believe it if you don’t want to.”

He kept holding you in his steady gaze.

“You have the capacity to accomplish great things, Mari. You’ve already accomplished great things, sighted or otherwise.”

No one had ever told you anything like that before. So you sat next to him on that bench in Central Park and began to cry. You stopped in fairly short order; you are not fond of crying, but he reached you. The same way he reached Simon. The same way he reached Cat.

There is something altogether unique to him that pulls people in. Simon calls him painfully earnest. Maybe that’s it. He means every single thing that he says. If that’s true, you have no idea how he organizes demonstrations, how he spends so much time handing out those flyers he prints up. The logistics of such an undertaking alone would exhaust you. And then, to get in front of a group of people, even if it's only twenty or so students, and mean everything he says, as if each person were a confidante of his? You don’t know how he does it.

You’ve watched him tire under the strain. You’ve heard him cursing up a storm with Cat when they’ve figured you’ve gone to sleep, angrier and more self-loathing than you've ever heard him get.

“Is it enough? Is it ever fucking enough?” he asks. “I may have convinced some people today, but I know others don’t know, and don’t fucking care.”

“The fact that some people won’t listen doesn’t negate the fact that there are people who will, and who have,” Cat replies.

“Right. Right.”

You gaze at him as he tweaks that draft of his latest speech, and you want to tell him that it’s enough. Whatever it is. Whatever it says. You believe in him. You believe he can change the world.

You scribble and pass him a note to that effect. He reads it and looks momentarily surprised, then pleased, then contemplative. It's a few minutes before he thinks of something to say in response.

"Thank you so much," he finally says. He folds the note up and puts it into his pocket. "I will keep that in mind."


End file.
